[A. Destruction of
the Jewish existence in Poland
1929-1939]
[5.5. Work of Joint Distribution Committee in
anti-Semitic
Poland]
[Factors in anti-Semitic Poland:
Government - population - no economy - no political resources]
This, then, was the situation facing JDC in Poland - a mass
catastrophe of the largest Jewish community outside the United
States:
a hostile government, an anti-Semitic population, and no local economic
or political resources to draw upon.
JDC could not send to Poland more than it received from American
Jewry. Table 12 shows that from 1934 on - even in the face of the
decline in JDC income and expenditure in 1935 - the importance of
Poland in JDC work increased steadily, in spite of the German
emergency. By 1937/8 fully one-third of all JDC work was done in
Poland.
[JDC: Jews in Poland are not the
only case]
This paralleled the attitude of the Jewish Agency, noted earlier, in
granting the majority of Palestine immigration certificates to
immigrants from Poland, despite the German emergency. The situation
described above was constantly brought to the attention of the JDC
Executive Committee members in New York. They were torn between the
needs of German Jewry, the necessity for supporting German Jewish
refugees in various European countries, the need for supporting
emigration, the urgent needs of Romania, eastern Czechoslovakia, and
Lithuania, the obligation to wind up the Russian work in an organized
fashion and, finally, the desperate situation in Poland.
Several problems confronted JDC in Poland. A major problem was whether
to enable at least a certain proportion of Polish Jews
Table
12: Expenditures by JDC in Poland
|
Year
|
Total
JDC expenditure (in $)
|
JDC
expenditure in Poland (in $)
|
Percentage
of total
|
1933
|
665,754xxxxxxxxxxxxx
|
123,700xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
18.5xxxxx |
1934
|
1,382,326xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
136,280xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
9.8xxxxx |
1935
|
983,343xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
216,532xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
20.7xxxxx |
1936
|
1,904,923xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
464,529xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
23.7xxxxx |
1937
|
2,883,759xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
943,830xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
32.7xxxxx |
1938
|
3,799,709xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
1,245,300xxxxxxxxxxxxx |
32.7xxxxx |
(p.190)
to emigrate and thus partly alleviate the situation for the rest. In
the early 1930s all such ideas were rejected out of hand. "With the
doors of the world closed to immigration in the largest measure, Jewish
life will have to be reconstituted in the lands in which large Jewish
populations abide", declared Hyman in 1934.
(End note 36: R17-Hyman's draft report to the Executive Committee,
8/24/34 [24 August 1934])
This was the JDC attitude until 1935/6.
